Great Violinists And Pianists

dor, the Composer, Violinist, and Chess-Player.--Giuseppe Tartini.--Becomes an Outcast from his Family on Account of his Love of Music.--Anecdote of the Violinist Veracini.--Tartini's Scientific Discoveries in Music.--His Account of the Origin of the "Devil's Trill."--Tartini's Pupils.

I.

The ancestry of the violin, considering this as the type of stringed instruments played with a bow, goes back to the earliest antiquity; and innumerable passages might be quoted from the Oriental and classical writers illustrating the important part taken by the forefathers of the modern violin in feast, festival, and religious ceremonial, in the fiery delights of battle, and the more dulcet enjoyments of peace. But it was not till the fifteenth century, in Italy, that the art of making instruments of the viol class began to reach toward that high perfection which it speedily attained. The long list of honored names connected with the development of art in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries is a might